Welcome to Govanhill, Glasgow’s weirdest neighbourhood, home to assorted brammers and bodyswervers including Rab fae Torrisdale Street and mad Tracy who torched her flat that time.
A place that’s always changing, from ‘the worst streets in Scotland’ to the hipster apocalypse of coffee and artisan bakeries, as well as muppets, rockets and midge rakers keeping it real.
Marvel at the flapping tongues and slanging rhyme. Find out where to buy brontosaurus cutlets. Learn why New York stole all its ideas from around here. You’ll be reeling at the sheer up-and-comingness of it all.
Cheers Govanhill is a humorous, semi-fictional, lyrical love letter to an endlessly fascinating place and is well worth a wee swatch.
Author Peter Mohan was born and brought up in Glasgow. He lives and works in Govanhill and has never knowingly been to Strathbungo.
Cheers, Govanhill, which includes a foreword by acclaimed photographer Simon Murphy, costs ten Scotch pounds plus a few quid postage. It’s available here:
When a wee nugget is tired of Govanhill he is tired of life, so said Johnson, Tracy Johnson, mad Tracy who torched her flat that time, or it might have been Rab, Rab Johnson, Rab fae Torrisdale Street. You don’t know and you don’t care but you’re tired of this place like you’re tired of your own stupid face.
You know it too well and it too knows you.
There must be less to the world than this place. Somewhere out there, away from here, where it’s all happening, the always faces on these always streets, pavements dulled by tired vision, scenes seen, others needed.
Our familiar music of tenement trauma, bladed weapons, lived experience of tonic wine, amphetamine sulphate, toenails caked with dirt.
The paedophile in the next close, the neds at the bus stop, alcoholic teachers.
The past is such a magical place.
There must be fresh locations, other tenements without the old school hits of living in this place, the big tunes from yesteryear back in the day which give all things meaning in this world.
A place of fewer rats, pointless pot plants, white white cinnamon buns.
City road like any city, dark city with a long past and black eyes, drunk men and football violence.
All cities in every place, overcrowding, relentless stress and pain.
So you go to bed and dream of a place, a new metropolis, enigmatic Mitteleuropa of church doorways in the medieval quarter, elm trees in your cobbled street, a shoemaker, a bistro, rubber plants curling along wood-panelled walls.
But when you wake the next morning you’re still in this place, the same place, and you lie in your bed and try to remember your dreams.
Pictures, sounds, impossibilities running through your head.
City of decay, vermin rodents and austerity politics.
City of neglect, open bin bags and racialised rubbish.
Knee-high weeds in every city park.
You must have dreamed about that too.
Your eyes may be open but that doesn’t mean you’re awake.
I’ve been here before, I know I have, I must have been.
I’ve been walking these streets all my life, drinking in these pubs since before I was born, in a previous life as a Roman centurion, some Spanish aristocrat or a flea-bitten medieval jakey.
Not a Friday night but a Saturday morning, sunshine on sandstone glowing in that morning when the sun is up but the streets are quiet, people out running with dogs alongside and fat legs in shorts, that’s the time, the best time.
Green land in the city’s grandest park, blossoms in gardens and wee backcourts, pot plants crowding tenement window or balcony space.
There’s beauty among the middens too. Seek and ye shall find, I tell thee.
A queue of people, and not just white people, outside the bookies and the boozers and the chippy, not a tote bag in sight, no ankles or moustaches nor expensive loaves of bread either just warm people who talk to each other but have fewer teeth and different tattoos than design consultants, picture framers or brave makers and doers.
Old souls from yesteryear who’ll always have your back. Ways of behaving that bind you to a place.
Remember the future but remember the past too, a heavyweight past, not just Govanhill but the black and white city we knew as kids.
That lost civilisation of gaudy murals on gable ends, rotting wood and dead masonry, empty space with giant puddles like vast lakes beside mounds of earth and piles of tyres that seemed hundreds of feet high.
We lived and died there and nobody knew.
Quieter streets too, odd pockets of suburbia in Cessnock, Springburn, Tollcross and Maryhill. Smart terraced homes on neat little avenues, villas and bungalows with garden paths, hooses with an upstairs where each child has its own bed, even its own bedroom.
Strange eyes round every corner, unknown buildings like a synagogue or an art gallery or an ice cream parlour. A little girl in red shoes.
Or cheap sannies, ninety-nine pence slip-ons, black canvas with caramel soles, the shoes of municipal socialism.
Football learned in those shoes on tarmac and concrete and gravel, red ash and black ash, blood and snotters from sliding tackles and diving headers because to do is to be and to be is to struggle.
Council grass worn away to smooth earth, two young trees as perfect goalposts for tenement kids kicking a ball around.
Dreaming of Celtic Rangers, Scotland England, home internationals, world cup glory.
Reflected dreams from telly and playground. Diced carrots next to the roundabout, broken glass in the sandpit.
Crouching pavements, hidden walls.
Black tar also softens in the sun, yellow flower dandelions reach out from cracks in a concrete wall.
All in this place, always this place, it’s all there’s ever been.
It was always the most fascinating city in the world to me.
So I drank ten cans and lay on the couch and looked out the window at a cold sky, a low sky, hollow somehow, and suddenly I realised that Govanhill is me and I am Govanhill and neither of us really exists.
It’s a nightmare, a quantum nightmare.
I didn’t really know what I was talking about so I decided to drink more cans instead.
Be yourself, they say. But it’s not that easy if you’re a fictional narrator, a fake character, a false man, a made-up guy.
There’s nothing real about me at all, and that’s the truth.
No genuine emotions, no truthful movements, no proper connection with the rest of humanity.
It’s a nightmare, a quantum nightmare.
But these cans taste good and that’s a fact, quantum or not, so I lay back down and started thinking about who am I and who is Govanhill and if we’re both truly being as good as we can be.
Am I the best version of my authentic self, or is someone else being me, someone who passed an exam, won a contest, with the top prize the chance to be me? Aye, right.
And is Govanhill really the best it can be, or is Polmadie, Shawlands Cross or Eglinton toll better at being Govanhill instead?
It’s a nightmare, a quantum nightmare.
More Govanhills, other Govanhills yet to be invented.
More languages, extra colour, louder women, fatter blokes.
It’s confusing, I know.
But blame the universe, not me.
Because Govanhill is me and I am Govanhill and neither of us really exists.
And if I invented Govanhill then I also invented Castlemilk Drive and Drumoyne Circus, Balmore Road and Mosspark Boulevard, Cumberland Street and Knightswood Avenue.
It’s a nightmare, a quantum nightmare.
If only there was a place, an imaginary place, an imaginary city, not as real as Govanhill but a parallel universe, an alternative reality, a different dimension where I’m a different person, a better person, less of an asshole, because I made different choices, better ones.
My head hurts.
But this is Govanhill, no two ways about it, quantum or not, so I opened another can and phoned my brother and he asked me how I was doing. Glad you asked, I said. Paranoid eyebrows, bipolar shoulders, schizophrenic shoes and a growing sense of dread at the impossible search for meaning in a desperate Godless universe of never-ending trauma and struggle. You?
There’s only one Govanhill, two Govanhills, three Govanhills or more.
All in one place, one time and place, here on these streets in the south of the city.
This Govanhill pavement, flattened canvas coated by centuries of shoes. Scattered history across cracked stone, dead wheels and broken feet.
Listen to that pavement, song of the banging close door, sirens in the night, quiet weeping from a darkened room, a black dog barking.
A toot from the railway line sounds like midnight fog horns from the old river on New Year’s Eve, the ringing of church bells.
Call and response, lonely harmony of distant sounds.
The people on that pavement, you and me, them and us. A painted anarchist in a dress, inverted full-backs, caffeine turn-ups and varnished nails. Doers and makers and tossers and dossers.
Or a young teen with blood down his face from a cut on the head, a bottle smashed, glass war.
Valium encounters, chib mark minimalism, nuisance behaviour, stealing your bike.
And on that pavement might be Irish bar, local boozer, big guy with a baldy napper and bad skin who’s drunk but friendly, fat and polite.
Or a problem drug user punting shoplifted perfume, splintered jewellery and bottles of strong drink.
Even a hip joint with craft beer and t-shirt slogans but no one standing at the bar and bored dogs ignored on the floor.
Sometimes that pavement goes backwards not forwards, backwards in time, because history had dreams when it was young too although things never turn out quite the way you’d hoped and now there’s less to look forward to than ever before.
Dead giants roam our streets, heavy ghosts of industry, of furnace and shop floor, of heat and smoke and noise.
Dusty roads and corners of grass where kids kick a ball at dykes in the backcourt or rats in the bin shed.
Sprayed slogans on the decaying bricks of an old city.
Motorway signals Glasgow approaching and it lifts your heart, it always does.
Back to the city. No more beach or hillside or holiday home, no tourists with backpacks and bumbags, nor fish and chips that Tripadvisor says are the best in the region.
No more timetables or roadworks or departure queues, just yer ain bed and yer ain shower and clean clothes to wear again.
Thank God for the city, the imaginary city, with chimney pots and parked cars and apartment buildings that aren’t being shelled at least.
It’s the city not the suburbs so it’s walking not driving, public not private, shared space not fenced off.
I know what it’s like in suburbia. I’ve been there, man. Seen it with my own eyes. No municipal parks or skating rinks or swimming pools or department stores or football pitches with red or black ash, nothing.
Here it’s tenement blocks and busy pubs and crowded streets that look global but act local.
The beat of our shoes on the pavement, scruff shoes, Charlie Chaplin shoes, mostly.
The four guys at the corner look like they’re staring you down but they move out the way as soon as you approach.
People with nae teeth, skinny legs and brass necks who smoke too much but whose warmth keeps you dry during the rainy season, where a total stranger gives you a straight answer and if you don’t take yourself too seriously, you’ll be just fine.
I’ve always lived in the city, an imaginary city, and now I am Govanhill and Govanhill is me.
If it didn’t exist I’d have to invent it and where would I start?
An imaginary city, an invisible city, a unifying place, Pittsburgh, Prague or Pollokshields. Wherever you are, that city is with you, for ever and ever, walking alongside.
Foot-high toddlers with kites in the park, Polish mademoiselles strolling arm-in-arm, an Indian family kicking an evening ball past jogging runners and cyclists.
No fantasy city or invented place, not theoretical but realitical, real-life reality of crumbling walls, dogs barking and bins unemptied since medieval times.
Back in the city, that’s where we are, and wherever you are, I wish you were here.
People sometimes tell me Govanhill feels like London. Dalston, Tower Hamlets, Bethnal Green.
I say I wouldnae know mate, I’ve never been to London, don’t even know where it is, is it near Edinburgh?
All I know is Govanhill is part of a city, a big city, dear old Glasgow town.
Govanhill is married to Kinning Park, Anderston, and Dalmarnock.
People talk the same, look the same, the pubs are one way or the other.
Govanhill’s brothers and sisters are Drumchapel, Springburn, and Provanmill.
Same old wheezing at the same old bus stops up and down the main road.
Buildings in Govanhill face the same sun and the same rain as in Possilpark, the Gorbals, Carntyne.
Dry bars, wet faces, cultural dexterity all around ye.
Sandstone tenements mean the streets here look just like Dennistoun, Partick, or Yorkhill.
Working class, high density, low income, ill health.
The same squirming landscapes, bricked-up doorways, underground creatures in basement hellholes in Barlanark, Mount Florida, Tollcross.
Pedestrian walkways showered in graffiti, young young Cumbie kill for fun.
If only city place names gave some clues to the past. Jamaica Street, Kingston Docks, Plantation Square.
The great villages of Glasgow once had mini town centres in their own right, with industry and commerce, thoroughfares and town halls, football teams and newspapers and civic self-worth.
Great villages laid waste and rebuilt, laid waste and rebuilt, again and again, each time less than before.
With solid citizens of pride and warmth weighed down by struggle but eyes that ripple in glittering water.
Shawlands, Oatlands, Newlands.
Aw naw.
Calton, Bridgeton, Royston.
Stop, please.
Linthouse, Auldhouse, Easterhouse.
I can’t take any more.
Too many places, so many stories, so little truth.
And then there’s Springboig.
So London? Aye.
Queen’s Park, King’s Park, Charing Cross, Woodside.
But this is Govanhill, Glasgow, with weird family members all over this toon.
Auntie Garngad, Uncle Auchenshuggle, nephew Cowcaddens and niece Crossmyloof.
So Google wrote me a letter in pen and ink on headed notepaper telling me everywhere I’d been and how long I was there.
Busiest day, shortest day, most steps, fewest steps, various visits for food and drink, shopping, attractions and sports.
How I went this way on Tuesday, another way on Wednesday, eight miles on Thursday, poached eggs on Sunday.
A second-hand copy of Ulysses. Forty eight cups of coffee. Three nil at half time.
Why are you telling me all this, ya mad maniac tech tyrant eavesdropping search engine bastart?
Denial is my friend. Ignorance about my life is all I have left.
Stop showing off. Quit boasting how much you know about me just because you can. What’s next, harvesting my organs?
So I kept on reading but then I had to sit down when Google told me my all-time data, the total number of places I’d been in my entire life and all my days was just 419.
Is that it? I wanted to travel the world, expand my horizons, experience other cultures and all I’ve been to is a lousy 419 places?
Poor show, wee man.
Talk about a life unlived.
Wait. I’ve been in Shawlands a few times, Pollokshields, Langside and Polmadie. Aw naw. I got lost coming out the pub and ended up in Strathbungo one night too. Battlefield, Mount Florida, Cathcart Road, a few more. Aw Jeez.
Throw in the Gorbals for visits to my brother and that must add up to 419. Nightmare. Pollokshaws West ruined my life.
Aye, cheers, Googlehill.
Stop shrinking my world with data. Some things are best left alone.
So to cheer myself up I used some crayons to draw a map of where I went yesterday, my direction of travel, and lo and behold it was shaped like a huge cock and balls.
Roundabout at Nithsdale Drive, left along Darnley Street, back down Titwood Road, wee tour round the pond in Queens Park and there you have it, man with giant erection.
It’s just like that ancient chalk drawing on a hillside in Dorset.
Anyway. Not in my name, Googleballs.
I didn’t ask for this, I don’t want it, of course I do, I can’t help it, yes please.
You spent six hours seven minutes in Paradise, Google said.
Cheers, Govanhill 